Mousavi, himself, has written an open letter to the people of Iran, congratulating them for their high and historic turnout and condemning what he calls the cheating, the official manipulation of the results.

Under pressure from the right-wing press to call those who fiddle benefits "cheats" literally, there have been tabloid articles demanding to know why he will not use the word "cheating" to describe welfare fraud, Mr Miliband laid into the whole benefit system in a way that would not raise too many eyebrows at a Conservative conference: